


Citrinitas (Bigarade Remix)

by chantefable



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Hannibal has Feelings, Hannibal is Hannibal, Intimacy, M/M, Oranges, Perfume, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-05 02:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12181551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: “You’re welcome to one of the guest rooms,” said Hannibal, and Will looked relieved, as if he had been waiting.As if there could have been any doubt.





	Citrinitas (Bigarade Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Petronia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Bigarade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5517722) by [Petronia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/pseuds/Petronia). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Petronia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/pseuds/Petronia) in the [remixrevivalmadness2017](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixrevivalmadness2017) collection. 



> _According to Strabo, the garden of the Hesperides is located in Tartessos, on the south coast of Andalusia._

  
The real mystery does not behave mysteriously or secretively; it speaks a secret language, it  
adumbrates itself by a variety of images which all indicate its true nature. I am not speaking  
of a secret personally guarded by someone, with a content known to its possessor, but of a  
mystery, a matter or circumstance which is "secret," i.e., known only through vague hints  
but essentially unknown.  
Carl Gustav Jung

  
What happiness to sit in intimate conversation with someone of like mind, warmed  
by candid discussion of the amusing and fleeting ways of this world… but  
such a friend is hard to find, and instead you sit there doing your best  
to fit in with whatever the other is saying, feeling deeply alone.  
Yoshida Kenkō

**Canto I**

Hannibal had been prepared for a day like this, and had a guest room carefully arranged to his liking should Will Graham ever spend the night. 

In fact, it had been a joy in itself to consider a number of eventualities, for sometimes their conversations were so intimate, so warm with shared understanding, that Hannibal liked to imagine opportunities unfolding like rose petals. He had a guest room prepared should Will be feeling poorly, or slipping too far into the role of hermit and martyr to be coaxed back; he had another guest room for a Will whose sensitivity and imagination had brought him close enough to Hannibal for candour. 

Earlier that day, Hannibal had checked the weather forecast, reasonably assured that Will, with the expanse of his wonderful mind fully occupied by the case, would not. And while dear Will was sitting still and wandering in his thoughts, a tumbler of whiskey forgotten next to the splayed fingers of his hand, Hannibal had went up to light the electric fire and turn down the linens in the room intended for a slightly less optimistic, but not entirely unsatisfactory scenario. 

The idea of Will spending the night in his home filled Hannibal with a thrill akin to an unexpected burst of sunlight.

He came back down, and Will startled softly as if woken from slumber even though his blue eyes had been wide open, and shortly after, the snow drifts quickly climbed higher outside. Hannibal turned on the radio, anticipating the final stroke to the carefully painted scene: whiteout conditions on I-95, if possible, stay home.

“You’re welcome to one of the guest rooms,” said Hannibal, and Will looked relieved, as if he had been waiting.

As if there could have been any doubt.

 

**Canto II**

Hannibal spent a surprisingly restless night; usually, sleep was swift to come, deep and nourishing and unperturbed. But that night, Will's presence, much awaited and much cherished, kept Hannibal from settling and stirred him awake several times. He opened the curtains and stared at the sheen of the snow, the hint of the moon's pallor in the cleared sky. 

He wanted to see Will again, and did not wish to wait for the morning to come; much better to wake him up and talk to him again, freely, and to make him see the monster inside. Of whom, he could not tell.

He switched on the lamp and read a few pages of Strabo's geography in its soft glow before he finally slipped into sleep, the sheets like dried grass against his skin, orange and yellow flashes behind his eyelids.

In the morning, he was unsettled by the scent. He had not dared hope that Will would use it. In fact, he had reserved all idle speculations - of Will shaving with the razor Hannibal had sharpened, of Will wearing the clothes Hannibal had chosen and becoming what Hannibal saw he could become - to a particular fantasy, one that belonged to a different guest room than the one Will was set to occupy. But Will never ceased to shock him.

"Good morning, Will," said Hannibal, and looked at Will with a smile. He was eager to catch a glimpse of transformation, and he was bountifully rewarded.

Hannibal's own appearance was a careful presentation: the dressing-gown that was perfectly appropriate yet artfully inviting; breakfast eggs made to Will's preference; the coffee brewing just the way Will liked it, even though he concealed his pleasure with demure contempt for excess luxury. 

Will smelled like Seville and sun-warmed leisure, and looked like a dangerous predator; a guest, he had walked into Hannibal's kitchen like he owned it, and seemed entirely unaware of the secret, savage pleasure such daring elicited in his host.

Would that such bright mornings never ceased.

 

**Canto III**

Hannibal had seized the opportunity to make a different match. (He had killed their daughter and left Will as thoroughly, as completely as he could: left him alone. He would no longer stand beside him.)

The company was pleasant, and yet the pleasure elusive; the spring a simulacrum of what rightly should have been, its radiance and sparkle in contrast to the bitter freshness he had courted. 

He would wash Bedelia's hair, and choose dresses for her, their conversations threaded with faint light and orange blossom. Her voice was, as always, persistent and memorable, her face a marble mask after which he had chiselled his own. At night, he tasted her, sweet like anise, gradually ripening on the vegetarian diet he had crafted for her alone. He touched her and was touched in turn, and she was always meticulously cool and purposeful in her pursuit of pleasure, majestic like an iris.

At night, he would wake up from strange dreams of creaking sails and gushing waves, and find Bedelia with her head raised and propped on her arm, gazing at him in silence, like she did during a session. And he would go back to sleep, the images shattered; he counted and imagined walking through a cedar grove, towards his memory palace. In those moments, he was always unhurried, but when he dreamed again, he ran.

He could not control it. He had exhausted himself, searching in the shadows, seeking validation and friendship that had been cruelly, spitefully denied. 

Bedelia went with him willingly, as a fellow traveller, an indomitable observer. She glided through the shadows next to him, a self-reliant object of desire. Her will was peculiar, urging her to ask Hannibal about his home and _forgiveness_ without flinching or looking away. And so he attempted to think of these things in the same way, pulling on the sweet thread of inspiration while Bedelia watched over him. 

He needed to forgive Will. 

Could forgiveness happen? If _he_ had happened, so could -

It could only happen the way _he_ had happened.

"There is only one way you can forgive Will Graham," she said, ever so wise, and the feathery shadows shrank back as the cedar caught fire.

He thought he felt like himself again when he answered forcefully, "I have to eat him."

**Author's Note:**

> Citrinitas: in alchemy, one of the four stages of _magnum opus_ , transmutation of lunar soul light into solar light, silver turning into gold; in Jungian psychology, the wise old man/senex archetype. 
> 
> Hannibal has Will Graham wear Frédéric Malle's Bigarade Concentrée and Bedelia - Guerlain's L'Heure Bleue (the old formula, of course). 
> 
> I am endlessly fascinated by Bedelia's supposed manipulation of Hannibal; here, she attempts to shift the power balance in her favour and suggest the idea of Hannibal eating Will by subtly role-playing as four phases of Hannibal's anima and presumably directing their discussions of Hannibal's dreams. (Neither Hannibal or Bedelia are supposedly Jungian psychologists in canon, and Jungian psychology doesn't even work like that, but Bedelia is in a complicated situation here, and this is the world of Hannibal. Dream logic.)


End file.
